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A couple of papers will be late today due to some flight changes last night.

Okay.

It's all canceled.

See ya.

I was thinking that we could work on a system somewhere else.

We don't have many, of course, we just don't, but we do, or even when we have it the other way, where we assign VIPs.

You know, once we really want to work on people in our own shop,

What I found, I found, you know, last night, I first got a couple of the miners, I suspect, and they brought in a whole lot of coal, and so forth.

The difficulty is that there's several others here,

who a cabinet officer or so forth could have been told to spend a little time with, you know what I mean?

Like, for example, there's Carl Van Detsen.

I saw him eventually myself.

But I saw what happens is that our own people cluster around and talk to each other.

That's natural.

And so these guys go, they come and say, oh, nobody knows they've come.

You sent me a guest.

And nobody took care of him.

And they... And...

Gerstacker, Dow Chemicals.

Well, there's no reason why it can't be worked out with a list of about four people that each cabin house is supposed to work on.

That's what I think.

And that's a social agent running right up there.

Yeah, just head into it.

Harold Kennedy of American Oil.

I didn't see him at all.

Nobody saw him.

John King, home testing.

Nobody saw him.

Yeah.

Yeah, in other words, you shouldn't be the only one.

Well, the trouble is that it isn't that they come to me, but the point is that they just stand there like poor little bumps in the walk.

We don't get any.

And it's in our own people.

Our own people who are standing there talking to each other and these other guys who are standing there.

And then, naturally, these guys, hell, all they want to do is come and talk to me.

They come up.

Nothing wrong with that.

But, hell, we have to.

I think the catapult is how you had Frank Shakespeare was there, you got McCracken there.

I mean, we had Stans and Stans.

And even, like, for example, when you had any of the Congress and Senators, I think most of them were there.

Well, it's a big deal to those people.

For a guy like Carl Landis to have had a chat with Frank Shakespeare about a year and a half, or a Secretary of State, Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of Congress, Arthur Burns, you've got the...

It has to be worked out, though, a little better in that way.

And we're not really on a planned basis.

Nothing works without a plan.

Peterson, for example, Pete Peterson could have been brought up to it.

He could be used.

Matt Samuels was there.

He could be used.

Scallop, of course, could be used.

And knowing how much hell my son and brother

Knowing Pete Peterson, I will bet you that he used himself.

I mean, I bet he moved around.

He may have.

I touched a lot of bases.

I didn't watch them all.

I'm sure there's some.

Well, there's some of those that he wouldn't know.

He wouldn't know.

Oh, yeah, that's right.

He allotted over that.

No, I doubt that he'd know this fellow Meyerhoff of Monumental Properties, whoever the hell he is.

But I have a feeling that we do these things so well.

But...

No, Mr. President.

The last time all I ended up in, frankly, is a, which was good.

Irish is good.

Oldman was good.

They were worth talking to.

Dale Webb wandered in.

He's a half-assed, you know, 10-year-old man.

I mean, he's, you know, Cooper Holt came up and spoke to me, which was fine.

But he's, you know, that kind of wood.

I've got...

I got that black ball that came up and spoke to me.

Yeah, it's a minority.

Majority.

Yeah.

He's, of course, one of our reporters.

But I just happened to, unfortunately, run into the head of Dollar Chemical.

I took him in.

Matt Kirk, I spent a minute with.

Carl Bendez, I spent a minute with him.

That's right.

Well, this is a small little list.

Normally, my guess is that I can do, where we have these affairs, and we're going to try to, I suppose, where women are present, it's really best to, on stag dinners, if you have these stag dinners, Bob, that we're talking about, they've got to be done that way.

You just can't have a stag dinner unless there's everybody's a sign.

And they, these guys, feel that they have talked to somebody.

Of course, when they're pissed, what do they come for?

Otherwise, they come.

They stand in the receiving line.

They have a good nice meal.

They hear God are in chorus.

They hear a couple of toasts.

They go out and have coffee and stand where they've been their face and leave at 10 o'clock.

Now, what the hell is that?

It's nice, but if I let you, you have plenty of value from their viewpoint.

They like it, but the thing you lose is any opportunity to make any...

There's a lot we can do, but we already do one thing.

I sent a copy of that guest list to every member of our administration before, so he at least has some notice of who's there.

And I'm sure there's a little bit of circulation.

Oh, there is, but don't assume anybody will do anything.

It's like, you know, we have to fight all the time on our airplanes.

Our people will, unless we call them on the train, they'll sit and talk with each other as long as we're here.

rather than going down and bugging the press, which is what they should do.

You've got to get right back and talk to the clowns that are there and the rest.

Now, a lot of them, I mean, our people now are so well trained, they know what to do.

They don't.

They'll get back and they'll work the press or they'll work the VIPs or so forth and so on.

And the...

But it's got to be planned.

It's got to be planned.

It won't even happen then.

If you give a counter-offensive warning and say that you can't make sure you get it, well, somebody's got to be here to be sure to go and have a talk with him.

These are not that important things.

Be sure you get to know him and give him a little good deal of what's going on.

It's easy to do.

We make money both ways.

We make money.

We sure do.

I think, too, that the cabinet officer or the administration person likes it.

Now, I was going to mention cabinet officers, and I still think that we're going to have very few any of them.

Very few.

But maybe we ought to try that administration deal, Bob, that we've done before, where the cabinet officer will do some.

It depends on the cabinet officer.

But if you can bring top White House bad people in,

just to go into work.

Work hard, people.

Don't get the foreigners.

Actually, putting me in silence, it wouldn't be a bad idea to get some suggestive talking points at the same time.

Exactly.

What did you say?

How the economy's going?

I hadn't thought of that, but I wouldn't think that

Let me say that when we get into these, if we do, if we get into these, we do the, you know, the stag dinner types and things for the label type, then it is critical, absolutely critical that every one of those guys, after we have the little gap, that's what we will have, and afterwards people do go out and talk to them because

I always feel for a fellow that's standing there and nobody's talking to them.

You know, it's only the eager beavers that rush up to me.

Sometimes they're very important and sometimes they're not very important, you know.

Depends on who the eager beaver is.

The other thing is to try to encourage our people to get in the habit of looking for a guy who's just standing off in a corner.

Yeah.

Well, if you have a boss, then just go over and say, Hi, I'm Terry Richardson.

Who are you?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's hard.

Some of our people will do that.

Some people do.

I agree with some people.

You've got to have the people that like to do that do it.

I mean, you've got to do it.

One thing.

They should be able to give you a good argument to do and that we're looking at them.

If they know that, they're going to do it.

A problem would be good if there's not, even though it's in the higher rank, you're sure you can use a problem like, like, you know, our...

that the people that have that kind of personalities are people like John Davies and John E. Hecker.

Well, Shakespeare's good at that.

Well, he would be, yes.

He'd be very good.

But you've got to have people that are really, you know, a lot of press who just walk up and do it.

They're much better sometimes than a person who is at Tom Stanford.

George Bush is a good at it.

I've seen him.

Yes, and he would be good at it.

Yeah.

I've seen Mr. Bush.

Yeah, I'll call it.

Yes, I'm clear for that.

No, there's no... Well, but there is a little...

I've heard from the cabinet officers and little notes and Shakespeare especially.

They do appreciate getting this thing.

We can only give it to them about

eight hours in advance, but they get it, and they use it for their own purposes, but it helps the circulation.

We do have a lot more in conversation on this.

If we don't, if you don't push it, people always say the easy line, the easy line is to get a little bit of people, you know, on the higher level, and that's what I consider.

I just said, let's let it go.

Well, anyway, that's fine.

You did a good job.

Of course, it's fine.

Dinner's ready.

Lisa's journey got over there by 10 o'clock, which is good.

That dinner moved fast.

Give you that thing, Miss Alex, which, of course, is, again, something you guess you can't do quite as well with a whip.

It really started on time.

Yeah.

Now I think that we, in the future, our problem is that we've got to invite the guests by an orderly.

He comes up for that yellow hole and we get the hell down there at 8 o'clock and start receiving.

That's the problem we've had with the space.

We don't sit down at 840 sometimes because

Crack around upstairs there and say, so have the gifts around 845, the honored guests.

Oh, yeah, the problem we get that we still, I don't think, are really wrong, is that we haven't busted through, is that there is some obsession in somebody's mind that there's a protocol or a social requirement that you have to wait until virtually all the guests are assembled in the East Room before the president can come in.

I think that's a lot of bullshit.

If people are invited for 8 o'clock, if God damn well ought to be there at 8 o'clock, if they're late, they ought to be embarrassed and walk in late.

Screw them.

But last night, we started, of course, we went right off to some couple work there.

That was too bad.

That's what you should do.

That's right.

We started out, and boy, we're going to do it every time.

That's right.

There's no reason you can't have the yellow over on the group, simultaneously with the guests.

That's right.

The guests, I think the client should come down.

No, the thing to do is to invite the guests for 7.45 to get the hell in there.

And then at 8 o'clock, so that the whole thing, or I don't know what you do, but the main thing is to get the goddamn thing over with at 10.45, 10.30.

Well, we don't have any more of these, but...

In the future, just invite these people that will work in crowds.

For example, Bob, it doesn't look good to have a son involved.

They're going to do anything.

It does good to have a skeleton.

A skeleton would probably be great at this sort of thing.

Pick people that are going to work the crowds for a change, you know what I mean?

We've had Helmut for, well, at least he's been to 30 state dinners that I know of, but that's fine.

After dinners, he's been to an awful lot of dinners.

No, he's been to some of the dinners where I was staying.

I just thought, you know, I've been here a long year, so it was a dying day.

You've got to have the opposite number of stated guys.

See, Henry put the skeleton list together, and we just...

Bill's on to it.

Okay.

Colson did.

Except I was doing that working dinner.

Yeah.

Well, we've now established that we're not going to do that again.

Well, the next one is the Flanagan deal, which is just next week.

What?

The Gideon argument.

Gideon argument.

That's a different.

That's, yeah.

Well, in that respect, I don't know who's on it, but if you had, Ivers would be a good one.

He's a good supporter.

I'm sure he'll play a game.

Carl Van Dessen is a good one.

And all of them, the National Cash Register is a good one.

It's a great plan.

They should all be in a good, good environment.

I didn't get a chance to talk to Debbie Sanders.

I don't know the others well.

Those three I think got it last night.

They were just eager to get out and do some work.

I thought they did it for some time.

We're good in here.

We've got two quickies.

One right here, Mr. Lewis, and one over here.

Here's the seat.

I'll leave you with one.

Well, I think what we ought to do on these types of things, we ought to reorder them.

We ought to assign people.

We also ought to tell our people, captain officers and senior staff, to be there at 7.30.

We ought to have a briefing session in a separate room with them.

I have a points statement.

You've got your list of people.

Right.

And here are the things to cover with.

We can give them a line on this, give them a line on that, get a couple of substantive people to do a briefing of our people.

Yeah.

We can ask our people to come around and have a little session and they can talk it through themselves.

Some of the points we need to get across tonight to our pigeons are

You know, make the point that on the current events, people, what are people going to be talking about?

They're going to be asking about the New York Times thing.

What's the line on that?

Well, it's all this, this, this, and this.

And that's getting your fan out there, getting you to do some of the work we want to get out there.

Thank you.

If they said, we're going to ask Steve.

If they said, we're going to ask.

Okay.

I think she'd have a lot of fun.

Would you?

No, I'm sorry.

I don't have much time.

Could you spill something on her or something?

I think that's a good idea.

I don't know that you need it.

I think you can't put it there, you know.

I just do it on the basis of having him give me a little pop and everything and let him feel it.

But let our troops get it for a minute ahead of time.

Then they see there's a purpose to the dinner.

And you say, here are the three points we want to get across tonight.

You know, if you're talking to people, let's try to sell the idea of this and that and the earth.

It sort of all is up on the economy kind of thing.

make the point of what a great job the president's done in hanging tight on such and such since last week.

One of the problems you have is when you're assigned to four people, you've got to say, what the hell am I going to say to the guy?

And if you have a little sort of pep session ahead of time, it's like IBM does with their salesmen every morning before they set them up for the day.

They do whatever they want to say.

You've got to be reminded about it.

It might as well be cheered up.

Well, you don't do that.

You do that yourself because you're disciplined.

Before you go to a meeting, you think, what is it I want to get across?

And where do I want to end up?

But most people don't do that.

They really don't.

That's why meetings are such a success.

And you help them by doing it for them.

You get a hell of a lot more out of them.

And I think they kind of like it.

They feel that we're on the inside.

and that they were there at the dinner working for a purpose instead of just there at another goddamn black-tie dinner.

Because to our people, those dinners do become a hell of a drag.

I mean, you've heard the Army chorus ten times, as you know better than anybody.

You've heard it.

You talk to a bunch of guys in a black-tie, and so you're standing there, and you go to those dinners on this night.

Well, you know, Henry, through his credit, I didn't have a sense to say what he'd like not to have done last time.

He's now, I think, got himself to the point where he realizes that he's on the list.

He doesn't have to be there.

He's now realizing he's doing more important things.

He's gotten over that absurdity.

The first time it was important to him.

For the first time, Henry's become mature about these things.

He shouldn't bother with anything.

You know, he needs himself much, much more.

Ah, oh shit.

And now Eddie.

Eddie, the mystery of man and people is wonder what Henry Kissinger tried with so-and-so.

Two available.

Sherman Adams, his old son, mentioned about one dinner a year.

Boy, it was a real event.

Too available.

There is a value to his being there because he has great celebrity value.

People love to talk to him.

All of the key White House people do that.

Every one of us.

Absolutely.

There's no question.

I know it.

I mean, more so than the Hilton brand and people like me.

They don't have a thing.

Not even this.

It's like flies on the wall.

But he can't enough, sir.

Or the known staff people, like, you know, Ehrlichman, Kissinger, Flanagan, Schultz, Peterson.

Peterson.

Herb Klein.

Klein, that was, yeah.

We could use Klein a little more.

Klein is good at moseying up to people.

He really is.

I would simply do this.

I think you ought to get a list of those that do like to mosey up.

Yep.

And I think he's good at moseying up to people.

Well?

There's no criticism, I think.

I must say, though, our people did, like I was watching at the White Hart, our people did, most of them did a pretty good job of moving around to hitting key people.

You asked me in that evening about the Chandlers, for instance.

Yeah.

People like that name.

I used to pray to somebody.

Phil Rogers moved down.

And it was a damn good thing they did.

Do you remember that?

Certainly.

Oh, I think they do.

I know Rosa very good.

Well, Rose is great.

For a matter of fact, I'm inclined to think she ought to be in more dinners.

Well, you said you didn't want her to be.

Well, you're right.

Any dinner that is a... From now on, I think we just have her on the basis that she's awfully good to talk to somebody.

You know, like people come and talk to her.

They've all come there.

They want to tell the President something.

So they say, well, I didn't tell him, but I saw him.

Or they saw you, or they saw this.

God damn it, then they told me.

Otherwise, they haven't told me anything.

Why wouldn't we ask somebody to abolish dinners?

We wouldn't have a problem.

What you're saying really adds up to that by making 10% more effort on those dinners, we could double the money we get.

I think so.

And that's really what it is.

Well, I could call my own experience of going to dinners for years.

Of course, not all of you should know this celebrity, but I can remember when I did go to some of his interviews at the Congress.

And a great deal to me if somebody came up and just made me feel a little comfortable.

It's a hell of a lot.

You know, so I remember even some stinky parking fellow that once was nice to me when I was in Europe.

I've heard very well.

I never forgot it.

That means a lot to me.

I've seen it.

When we're in the traveling party, when we're the guests at dinners overseas, it's an awkward thing.

You stand there.

But when he comes up to you, and most places they don't do very well.

France, they do a superb job.

France is really, really working.

And they did.

They did a superb job of their outworkings and also of making sure that each of us had a conversation with the golf.

And they really worked at it.

But of course they were, they had an interest in doing it.

We don't have any particular interest in getting every, the French people to meet you because it doesn't look any good.

They were playing a different kind of game.

And the Germans did well out of that small dinner that Kiesinger gave.

The Europeans do do well.

The British do well too.

They move people around.

We don't do well at it.

I just don't think we do.

As I told you, the best one on the State Department is, uh, you know, Bill McComber.

McComber, yeah.

Far the best.

He should be there every day.

Well, CODIS is very good, too.

Yes, he's good.

He gets in and works at it.

There's no CODIS money, but McComber is excellent.

If Bill wants approval from you to read a statement by you at the Okinawa signing ceremony,

Uh, we've got one.

It's an old dirt bike, son.

It's a good micro.

We, uh...

It's good.

Yeah, you're not involved in it, but once it's done good, it's a good day.

I think it's a good day.

He is distressed when I'm not coming.

I'm a small one.

Son, is there any help?

No.

I don't think there's any problem.

Now, he didn't want you to, but he did deal with the Japanese sensitivities.

There should be a statement from you that would be really good, necessarily.

Project coming.

Well, yeah, but we're... We haven't quite yet.

We've been going over the thing.

I'm not still exactly clear how to go out and put ourselves together on this.

Your point that we don't have anyone really in charge is right.

We've got so many different ideas and so many different ramifications.

You've got totally separable things here.

You've got a legal thing that we've got to do.

You've got the question of the legality of secret documents that's got to be pursued.

a PR question for the Claude out in Iowa, where there and there, we're in, we've got some muddy waters in there, because I think the press is obviously, the Times' intention has to have been to hurt us, to hurt the war.

Well, on the war end, I think they can go deeper, and I think they're laying some precedents here that can go deeper.

In other words, now we've got these documents, now we're going to get other documents, and we'll get the Nixon stuff, we've got the Johnson-Kennedy stuff, now let's get the Nixon stuff.

But that's why the legal thing is so important.

It's got to be out.

If we lose the legal one, you know, my God, these documents are like a burial.

We've also got the, I think we're at the point where we've probably got to follow Henry's point of serving notice.

The thing that a lot of our people are starting to realize the concern about is that we've got stuff all over in here that is susceptible to this type of chip.

That's right.

And that's what I've heard about.

If we don't put the screws on it, I think probably we're down to what has got to be as cold as Henry's basic approach, which is you inform the cabinet officers that we aren't going to put up with this crap anymore.

And that it will be understood from now on that the assistant secretary in charge of the department will be suspended if anything is leaked in his department, regardless of guilt.

And he will be kept on suspension until the guilty parties found him.

And that's true if it's Alex Johnson or, you know, anybody, a great buddy of ours, as well as any, I know, but we've got buddies who may be in this.

you know, without, just because of their mouthpieces.

Some that may be in because they're naive.

We've got a lot that just don't know any better.

Bill is a culprit.

Bill Rogers, we had talked to him umpteen times, like that Algerian.

Frank's got another leak on the front page of the Times today.

Another secret document.

About us?

Yes, we had not plans for 72.

Saigon, secret preparations for defending Saigon in 72 or something.

By us, by them.

But then you've got the whole question that they're building up, which is going to go the other way, which is

the concealing information, the dishonesty.

You've got a very tough case here in Lyndon Johnson's press conference where he said, we're about to build up this war.

And it was the day he said it was the day after they had started the building up.

And he said the Asian boys were kind of worried.

Well, that's a campaign.

Roosevelt said there was something else.

Roosevelt said American boys are never going to fight in the European Union.

So there's always something.

But that's sort of.

called, I don't know the details exactly, but he called a press conference at his initiative, at which he said, I want it clearly understood that there's no thought, and he put it very dramatic down, something in terms of, you know, let God strike me on the forehead if I would ever consider escalating the war in Vietnam.

And he did it the day after he had started the escalation.

Well, now, Bob, see, that's stupid.

If you don't do things like that, see, you're not going to get caught in that.

But you're president now, and if they can show that president did, then they're going to start complying.

And now, you look at it.

Here's a very minor thing, and I may say it, but I can see a potential in the stories today.

We got the injunction.

The episode that the first thing that's in joint is the Kennedy, today was going to be the Kennedy stuff.

Now that won't be printed.

Now they're making the point that the papers also went back to the background of Eisenhower, the Eisenhower administration involvement, and even some children involved.

And then they say, just as a statement of fact, Richard Nixon was vice president during the Eisenhower administration.

All right, now that's laying the groundwork, or could be, for building up that there's something in the papers that haven't been printed yet that we consider dangerous to this administration.

And that's why we've got an injunction on that, that we let the Johnson stuff get out, but we're going to try and bottle it up.

Now, the one thing I do think we could do, particularly after what I said yesterday, if Bob, we cannot tie this to the Kennedy-Johnson administration, because after all, sure, they're going to say that this is nice, and this is us, and so forth.

That line is being followed, isn't it?

At least if one person, if our people could at least do that much, yeah, it's going to be very hard.

Our people are doing it, but that isn't getting critical.

It's not just going to.

One of the things that's raised here, and apparently some of the congressional guys, our congressional guys have raised, is why don't we

And then the massive deception of the previous administration.

Now that's a pretty tough thing to do.

Somebody can't.

We can't.

But the point is, why can't we join in the condemnation of how we got into war and say this is a shocking thing and we are, you know, this was a bad thing to do.

The other idea that I can't do, that they're pushing, the other problem is to separate the two issues.

One, the violation of the law by the New York Times.

How we got the war.

And the other, the content of the documents and the substance of the history.

The substance, we want to let them keep as their family argument.

The secret leak is the other thing.

One thought of trying to make that separation was to go now and take all those documents, the entire file,

And by your order, keep them classified, but release them to all the Senate and House committees that are concerned.

Which then says very clearly, you're not concerned about covering up anything.

Or the right to know what you're concerned about is protecting.

But all those men have top secret clearances.

They're entitled to see the papers.

That's a good idea.

Now, the problem with that is, the argument against it is you're violating executive privilege, which is the only basis on which we haven't shown it to them up to now.

When did they ask for it?

Yes, constantly.

Oh, I see.

It was recently.

It was a long time ago.

Yes.

This file, yes, the Defense Department's refused to give it to them.

Now, there's probably something that the Defense Department doesn't want them to have, and it may very well be...

that it's something that doesn't hurt us, it hurts the Johnson people because that's who the defense establishment still are in the cases.

I think that's, I think you've got to realize and hear your judgment that OIK wouldn't have very good judgment about this.

He's terribly concerned about defense's role in this thing.

The other idea along that same line was that we consider and say that we're doing it, say now that we're going to do it, declassifying, going and setting some people on that material right away with the idea of declassifying all the material that can properly be declassified.

Because another issue here is, as we well know, they stamp all those red stamps that they have on everything that comes out.

Some of the classified material is ludicrous.

Johnson is declassified.

an awful lot of stuff in his book.

He said it's going to be classified in his book.

So I'm just questioning if we have enough people out there.

The argument is, out of all those reads, if there's 7,000 pages of material or whatever it is, I would bet you that there's only 1,000 at the most pages that are what any rational person would consider .

Well, everybody, when in doubt, you stand at the top secret.

So that, again, would play, what they're looking for is some human greed, in a sense, that will put us on the right side of this person, who's there, who's, well, this is the whole crew, really.

It's Coulson, Scali, Ehrlichman, McGregor, Schultz.

Sort of these funny charmers.

Yeah, pull it together.

Yeah.

And Sapphire isn't the one.

It's more complex.

You'll look at it in terms of tomorrow's story and not next year's or next week's.

Colson is probably the one because he's a lawyer looking at it from a public and political side.

Because there are a lot of legal questions in it, too.

But the problem there is Colson.

Let me say that I think the Kennedy stuff should get out.

I'd like to have somebody analyze, if I could do that, maybe a behavior that, what does it tell about the Kennedy thing?

Now, the way it'd be getting out is not to put out any documents, just to put out the... See, the injunction runs only to the Times, Bob.

Right, yeah.

So let somebody else just give it out to somebody else.

Well, if you release all of it to the Hill, then you could get a Hill guy to...

to start talking about that.

If you declassify, you declassify that.

It's a whole bad business.

No use if we take any comfort out of the fact of how do we get into the war.

That, Bob, is an issue I would refuse to make.

I can't make that issue.

I mean, you can't make that issue and then continue it.

You cannot justify continuing a war that you got into by mistake.

I mean, if you made a mistake, you can't justify it.

Even in the campaign, you've got a fairly clear position of the steps.

I didn't criticize any of that.

Well, but the process, you said it was a process, didn't you?

No, sir.

I said we should have, I said that we should have, I didn't criticize the stealth or anything of that sort or not telling the people I criticized them because I said that we, that once we got in, my view was, of course, a failure to use our car, but that's the only thing I criticized.

The Dracula is how I can write down and just go, no, I'm not in that category.

And also, we can't, why don't you give away that, giving away the whole game?

You've got others to go to.

I don't mind others doing it.

You've got another thing from a public point of the fact that top secret material is published every day.

There's always top secret stuff being leaked and published.

Why is this different from others?

Why are we moving on this?

Technically, there is a difference because this is verbatim.

It's quite different because the top secret and the other instances have stories that are leaked based on this or that document.

Here, they print it just word for word.

What you've got involves everything code-breaking.

I would assume code-breaking to me.

Well, a whole lot of other things, but there again, doesn't somebody need to study it?

Yeah.

Well, I know it's a tough one.

It's just one of those things.

But don't have any of us, don't make any mistake about one thing.

We have to take this on.

We cannot, if we don't stop, if we don't make an effort to stop this, we can forget all the security in this government.

We can forget it.

Yeah.

Well, that's understood.

I must admit, I must admit, as I said, I don't think it's, I don't think it's a case of, I don't think, despite our manly, I mean, our efforts, Rodgers, they sure didn't give him any plenty of pain.

I noticed the TV gave him some.

A little bit burned off.

Huh?

Just a little bit burned off.

And a little, well, they're fighting the battle, aren't they?

Yeah, this is what we're,

And we've got the press not only naturally against us, but because it's a question of right to know and all that kind of crap, it's one where they get into their own area and they're all screaming.

Of course, this is the first time that there's been an injunction on publication.

First time this sort of thing has happened.

Historical.

They're going to build the travel and everything else into a huge thing.

And somehow we've got to figure out the way in that that puts us in the right place.

Except for George, they don't have any other newspapers.

That's my house.

They're working on that.

A huge defense department.

What are they doing?

wandering around.

Bob, you've got to expect the newspapers to take a lot of the right to know.

Oh, sure.

On the other hand, the question that we have to fight, no, the problem, no, the question is not what we have to fight, the question is,

Given that we have to fight it, how can we position ourselves in that fight so as to separate the two issues?

You can do it easily in a lawyer's mind, in a sophisticated person's mind.

You mean the issues of what?

The issues of the secret documents versus covering up how we got into the water.

There was a position on the principle that we can't let this kind of thing get out.

But not on the principle that we're covering up how we got the burgers.

We didn't do it.

Or that we have anything now we're trying to cover up.

Which we do, but we sure don't want to be in the position of looking like we did.

Not with regard to getting into the war.

Not with regard to getting into it, no.

But with regard to get out of the country.

And that has to be.

I mean, there just has to be something this government's got to do without people knowing it.

Apparently people will accept that.

Okay.

I think... What else is moving?

Sorry, sorry.

I'm not seeing... Oh.

the only story

I feel like, Bob, we need to get somebody a little more ballsy on the farm publicity questions.

I know that you have Whittaker on it, and I think you need to get somebody more, you know, drive harder, drive the others and so forth.

Several of the congressmen have been mentioning this to me, and it's not getting across.

Now, I think we just do it.

I had the greatest confidence of Whittaker on the issue, but I don't think he earned it.

I just don't think that we're getting any...

I just haven't come out really as a...

I was supposed to be bringing Bob McCauley in.

Yeah.

To work that area.

Yeah.

I'm sorry.

The pedestrian road.

It still turns...

Supposedly getting spitzered.

tied in somewhere in spite of the farm jail.

So when you get in, you do better on state's publicity terms.

The need there is recognized.

It is going to work.

Yeah, I get in quite a bit on that because I'm doing all these things.

We are, incidentally, in our hole, and if I hadn't noticed, and Bob's doing it sometimes, is that we, at least in our time, when we're in our hole, we're in super great shape with the barbers.

Well, it shows it.

We've got to do a farm hole and get someone else's farm hole.

You see, on that Kennedy thing, you see, if we could get that chapter that went out, it would be very good, just to get it down and leak it to some other paper.

Well, there are two things.

One, you've got to protect the integrity of the government of secret documents.

That we've got to fight for.

The other thing is, you've got to put the... You've got to inform the public as to what this is all about, and that is how we got into the war.

which is not our problem.

That's the problem with the previous administration, and that is something that the public is proud of them all.

Well, they're going to find out now, because as Emansfield has declared now, that he's going to hold hearings with his subcommittee if the full Foreign Relations Committee doesn't move on right away on this whole, you know, going back to these documents and the whole basis of the history of U.S. involvement.

And, uh,

which again argues, it seems to me, for releasing all of this stuff to the Hill.

A lot of them have this.

Sure.

What the hell do we care, really?

That's right.

And I'm sure the argument against it is that if we do that, then we open the floodgate, because then, once they've finished digesting that and trying to do it, then they'll sit up there and say, now send us all your files on the Lodge bombing in 1970.

Oh, I think we've got a perfect answer there.

We could say that that does involve it.

One is ancient history.

This involves current history.

I don't see that you set precedent on anything.

The precedent here, the causal argument, legalistically makes a lot of sense, which is the theory of executive privilege legally is nullified by the Times' printing of as much of this as they already have and the fact of their possession of it.

Now it just, and I think to the ordinary guy, it simply right now doesn't make any sense when he knows the New York Times has all this stuff.

For us to say the New York Times can have it, but Senator Boebride can't.

That's true.

But you're not, because Senator Boebride, I think that we can, his argument against the cross the bridge, though, Bob, I'm taking the New York Times on that, we can't second guess that.

No argument.

It doesn't relate to that argument.

The argument is you need to classify it.

It's a pretty good device, too, because if you get a lot of tonnage up there on the hill, they can wallow around in that for a long time.

And it starts to lose the New York time.

The value of it, to the times, is its exclusivity.

Looks like we've got answers.

Our work, I mean, is a pitfall town, but that's the first one that looks like it has any.

No, on the other hand, there's public value.

We do have people hammering on.

People showing their hands.

Is this the other administration?

That's being done.

Oh, yeah.

Now they're accusing us.

Who was it?

Somebody said we put it out.

I think that's fine.

I think let's separate the point of this, the documents.

Content really helps us.

The principle is what hurts us.

The other thing is that I am probably wrong, but at least we have considered the possibility that this is another quagmire and tempest.

It is in my organization.

Yeah, but this is probably the biggest storm.

When you get outside of here, the network news made a big thing out of it, but many people understand it.

I don't know.

That's just...

They either are or they aren't.

There's a real question as to whether... Confirmable.

Oh, no, he is confirmable.

There'll be a fight for whether he wants it.

Unless the unions decide they want to really go out.

The thing is, do we want to take on the unions to do it?

Teamsters and the FFL are both pat on the elbows.

And, uh, they're trying to put that together and find a point.

Have you talked to Henry since we broke up there with the resolve that Henry would prepare something for the president this morning on a strategy in terms of this Mansfield thing?

Whether we turn anything, what we say.

Did anybody raise with Henry the question of turning over the whole violent conference?

Yeah, that's the whole thing that we discussed.

And I think the consensus is that the President ought to say there's not an issue with these documents.

If Mansfield wants to conduct a proper hearing, we'll cooperate as we always do with the Congress, with security officers present and handling sensitive material as we always do with the Congress.

and that the Congress will have the same level of cooperation from the administration as it always has.

This isn't a question of withholding anything from anyone.

And that the first step is for the subcommittee to decide what the scope of this inquiry is and to get in touch with us, to kind of rise above this whole business of these particular documents.

So Henry's going to pull something together for you in the way of a specific line to be taken.

And as I said, we'll hold off briefing until that's done so that you get a chance to take a look.

Yes.

Okay.

We're going to have that action pretty soon.

That's right.

He'll be hit with that.

Well, we're in a go position on it.

Jim Hodgson would like to feel that he had had a personal communication with you on it.

No, he is not going to vigorously oppose it.

He wants you to understand that me and others are objecting to it and so forth.

And he said, in all conscience, he felt that he should have a few minutes with you to just run through these ramifications before you finally decide.

And Malik felt that we should take another look at it.

I told Malik, I think, well, he feels that other candidates are available and that you should have the option of reviewing all of the potential candidates and picking the best one.

and he's got a woman from Ohio that Bob Taft is advancing, and he's got a couple of other men from around the country, and he'd like to feel that you have a full range.

I have no, oh, no grief for Burris.

Burris has said that the Constitution, the Congress, and so forth, and so on, can only prove the basis of the government problem.

Correct.

Because of the labor union.

Yep.

No, I have no feeling about that, except I want a strong interview in a minute.

I'd like to get somebody that is not known or so.

Yeah.

If we can.

But I don't want any patsy on that.

We, uh, we've just got to take, we've got a bicycle.

Well, suppose I ask Malik to, to send you in, uh, all of the alternatives.

Yeah, I'm not really interested in that.

Well, I'll try to.

But you know what it really needs is a judgment here, John, as to whether or not we can find a person who will be strong and effective as a general counsel for the NLRB.

and who can speak by without as much opposition but he must be as strong as Curtis.

I have a, as I said, diverse function.

What they want, whether diverse or regional, in our defense is we've not heard a general counsel for the last 20 years.

You just need to talk on his job.

And we're not going to take Hodgson's or Schultz's man.

They lead the other way.

See, house people, basically.

But I mean, we can't go with the ladies department.

That's what I said.

They're house people.

They're departmental people.

Yeah.

This is important.

We need somebody who's for management.

I know what this thing is.

Oh, I've got Malik coming in in a little while.

Give me his recommendation.

Let him do a little... Let him go to the bottom.

Take a recommendation.

Who's the best?

One, two, three.

George Saverna.

All right.

He's got criteria.

He knows.

Good.

Okay.

Then our good old Cross Florida Barge Canal is still kicking around.

Whitaker would like to authorize a Corps of Engineers to drain a lake, a dam there along the canal.

And knowing your interest in the thing, he wanted me to take it up with you.

What does that do?

Well, it's a good purpose of helping the environment.

I don't know.

It helps the environment, but the governor and a lot of people down there are for draining this pool back down to river size.

The issue is how the canal is terminated, not if the canal is terminated.

And it is a clear-cut signal that the canal is dead.

is drained.

It's a lake that's been dammed in furtherance of the canal.

The problem is that if the lake is permitted to remain, then a lot of trees will die.

And then if you drain it later, you're going to be left with a great big barren area.

So that's the environmental aspect of it.

There are no commercial overtones to it in the sense that there's development around it or anything of that sort at all.

It looks to me like

kind of thing that ought to be done, and we ought to put an end to this thing.

Your mail, as of today, since January 19th, has run 6,500 cards, letters, and telegrams, 5,500 in favor, 1,000 opposed.

Of those opposing, 680 were foreign letters from the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce.

So you've had pretty overwhelming support for this thing.

I think we are.

I think you're on a very clear course.

And the Corps of Engineers opposes the drawdown, and that apparently is what raises the issue.

Its reasons are to reduce the pool size and depth, reducing a reservoir.

Access to the lowered water for water sports will be difficult.

It will create an estimated 1,500 acres of mudflats.

But the environmentalists point out that these are mudflats among trees and that the trees will be killed if you leave the water there.

And in the long haul, the grass will grow back and it'll be usable upland.

But really, the opposition is that once you draw it down, then that finishes the project and everybody knows it.

I've got some reading here on it if you'd like to have me leave it.

It's a signal.

It's what it is.

It's a very symbolic act.

If the Corps is told to draw it down, then that means that's the end of the forward barge canal.

Sir?

Well, because the seven-man Florida cabinet is going to take a position on this very shortly, and then that's going to throw the governor and the state behind it, and we're going to be getting a lot of pressure.

No, no, no, no.

They probably will vote four to three to draw the pool down, and the governor's already committed for drawing the thing down and putting an end to the Barch Canal, but then we'll be appearing to be reactive.

Now, we can stay and do it.

We can wait and pick up that state support and then do it in response to the requests of the state officials on that basis.

But... That's my intention.

All right.

I think I just...

I don't know.

I think we've made our point that it's going to be pretty hard to... Just say we get in line all the time.

So I'm saying we should get out.

Okay.

I had Whitaker follow up on that cabinet meeting in there where Sands and Morton were talking about delays and these things on environmental grounds.

And I'd like to leave this with you for just a page and a half.

And I think it would be helpful in your getting a feel for what actually is going on in this.

And in effect, both of them were wrong is the way it comes out.

Romney got a little off the reservation on housing, but I think we got him back on.

And we decided to tighten him up.

Well, no, he was pandering and trying to make it easy on himself with some of his blacks over there.

saying that we would use our federal leverage and that communities that didn't have low-income housing probably wouldn't be getting federal money and this kind of stuff.

We got him in and got him straightened out, got a statement of policy down on paper for his department.

And I think we have a position now for a while.

He's got a job problem.

Sure, sure he has.

But hell, he's got a statement of policy now that he can hold on to.

And if he doesn't want to take the rap, he can blame us for it, you know.

So there isn't any excuse for his not adhering to it.

But it's just a question of keeping him aboard.

Do you have any doubt about the policy?

No, I think we hit a pretty good balance.

Yeah, there's something there for everybody.

Well, you heard these real estate guys when they were in here.

They found they could live with that.

That confused the hell out of the press.

They were sure that we were going to go the other way.

And they were getting all ready to clobber us.

And there are a few more cases filed today.

Mitchell's got his instructions on that, but he had these ready, and I told him to mix it up so that there were three or four that we could announce that they were not going to press.

He's got, I guess, four that he's filing, so we should have some balance in the thing.

So that's it.

I've got Sam Devine coming in to tell me about welfare reform.

So yeah, and we'll hear him out.

And maybe he's got something that our friends at HEW may have outsmarted themselves.

They had a little debate yesterday over there before, 350 people, in which Pat Rosselli on one side and this Dr. Wiley, this welfare rights guy on the other,

And Patricelli said some things that just may clear this thing in the House of Representatives.

That we're for state maintenance of effort, and we'll try and get the Senate to amend this to cost the states more money.

And that we're for eliminating the state residency requirement in an amendment to the Senate.

And well, no, hell no, we're not.

We've made it very clear to Elliot.

And remember, you got interested in this.

And so I got on Elliot and I said, wherever possible, we're in favor of one-year residency requirements because it's going to help to keep this thing down.

So Pat's always off the reservation.

But that's not the main point.

The main point is that it's so touch and go in the house.

that if we're taking the position with the House, well, look, fellas, you go ahead and pass this, but we're going to change it over in the Senate.

We're going to see an erosion of support in the House just on that account.

So that may have some effect in this thing.

I won't give Devine any signals at all.

I'll just listen to him.

I see no answer to what John...

The only problem I'm thinking of is we're really looking at terrible budget problems.

Now, I realize your sailor's got heavy school.

He can cool his skin from the ball, fine.

Welfare reports, one, fine.

Well, we thought that out.

We didn't get it.

Maybe we just don't have the issue.

And we still have the issue.

We still got the issue.

And we can use the help of that.

The other point I'd make is that if we don't get this, I do think the backup position is to go along with that business that everybody's talking about.

A few experiments.

Yeah, well, we can always do that.

We can always do that.

And it may be that we've got to go with the whole thing.

I don't know, but... You're confronted with one goal on Friday in Rochester.

Yeah.

And that is that with the timing of this whole thing in the House, you're pretty nearly going to have to say something about welfare reform in your remarks up there.

I know.

Well...

I'm going to talk about other foreign laws, but the rest of you talk about welfare reform.

If you... Well...

I hope you don't.

I hope you can say some things about domestic matters.

It's getting to be fairly obvious and fairly notorious, particularly among the press who come, because I hear it when they come see me, that even during domestic briefings, you're preoccupied with national security and that you don't pay lip service to the domestic problems.

And I think we're going to see...

Well, they may be right, but we do, you know, we just, we have a problem.

We're spending much more time on domestic.

Yeah, but here's a chance for you to grandstand it a little bit.

And to, we can think of some things for you to say there about welfare reform, about some of these things that are sufficiently equivocal.

You'd like to revolutionize it?

Yes.

And

I think drugs would be very appropriate there.

I tend to cover that.

See, I was trying to get something new to talk about.

Well, I think if you say drugs, you can say housing, because those are both timely this week, and get them positioned properly.

Well, if you could prepare something on drugs, maybe the housing thing, if that's still in the interest of the well bearer, the well bearer thing is...

When does the House come up?

We don't know.

It could be as early as Thursday or it could be over the next week.

As early as Thursday.

The best guess in the staff meeting this morning was to go to the floor next week.

It was a limited rule.

You'll never really satisfy the press.

Domestic versus foreign.

Because if ACP follows, they won't write the domestic report.

Well, isn't that, they're looking for, really, they're looking for negatives that they can assert.

Sure.

And it's very easy for them to say, he's totally preoccupied with national security, he pays no attention to domestic issues, as evidenced by the fact that at two domestic briefings, he never mentioned a domestic issue.

Now, the fact that we spent three hours, the preceding three hours, backgrounding on domestic issues, of course, is gloss over trying to do this.

I know it.

But it becomes, you see, I've had three different members of press corps over the last two, three weeks argue this.

And so I'm sensitive to it on Rochester because it'll be another nail in the coffin, so to speak.

So I guess I'm going to go to my favorite part, which is frankly intended to hit the drug a bit more than the sociologist.

Well, it's a combination that's actually very timely.

And you can do that, I think.

When will that come out?

That comes out Thursday.

It is out, in effect.

Oh, yeah.

Jaffe was on television last night because CBS had an old interview with him.

And they replayed it.

It was damn good on television.

Then there was a bunch of stuff about a follow-up with him on the drug thing.

I think that the only thing I see much mileage in the domestic front of me is assuming that we will assume for the moment we at least are holding our own environment.

It's like the only other one, the only one I see in mileage in the present time is really the drug thing.

I mean, where are we now?

Welfare.

Welfare reform.

looks like a loser at the moment.

Due to the fact that it's so confused, it looks like we're adding to the welfare rules.

Don't you think so?

Yeah, but see, here's a chance for you to focus down on that part of the disclaimer.

And so it does several things for us.

It indicates your interest in the subject, so we don't suffer from people saying, well, the president's behind this, and he doesn't have any convictions, and so on and so forth.

It does away with this problem on the domestic briefings that I mentioned.

And it puts you on the side of work.

And with the regional press particularly, that should be a very good line to take.

Well, we hit it for about three different times, you know, on speeches, yes, and it got a lot of play.

It got a terrific amount of play.

But the press doesn't think the original Washington Press Corps is looking for an angle.

Now with regard to revenue sharing, where do we stand on that?

I think you can talk a little bit about the problems of the cities.

Maybe about one paragraph that says our cities, particularly New York, know what a terrific crisis we have in the cities.

But how about all that?

How about all the optional programs?

We will already have given them all in and outs of that.

John Connolly will be up there and will give them all this revenue sharing.

But you can hit revenue sharing just a pat at passing by saying, now you hear a lot about the problems of the core cities.

We believe that the answer to most of these problems is in terms of money.

Could I just suggest we just emphasize the

property tax angle right and i i don't know if you got it i sent you down an analysis that our folks have done on property tax made that uh that uh is the line that we put out with the captain and all these speakers that are going on maybe we can start getting that up we could get us a few more comfort yep that's what the real estate board is saying right right

It's really amazing how little that stuff gets in the press.

It really is.

They testify that I read them.

Now, John isn't in there.

He read the television.

Well, it just isn't in there.

I tell you, I'm more and more impressed that you have to say it.

And once you say it, then it becomes a part of the lore.

Well, we've said it, though.

We've talked about welfare reform.

Yeah, but you haven't really, well, but you have, for instance, you have really not made property tax, any words that you've spoken, not made property tax the issue.

You have made work the issue in welfare now.

Very interesting.

But your Williamsburg speech, by just that?

Senator Marks has made work the central issue.

But I meant even that, though, was a blip.

I mean, I just, you can go back and read the last six weeks of news summaries.

I was just looking at all of them the other day.

God almighty, it's just so hard, and I know how everybody around here works to get out these stories, and it's so difficult to get anything.

I'm on the domestic side.

This is what I'm saying.

You can send cabinet officers up one side of the street and down the other and it doesn't make a voice.

When you speak, it does make a big voice.

And more and more, I'm coming to the conclusion that all this subsidiary effort and the line we've been taking with Oregon, that the president's now done his part, it's up to you people to do yours, is really not valid.

That we do more with a periodic comment from you than we do with 10,000 foot soldiers out there beating the bushes.

Another indication, John, of the problem is if you read the last ten press conferences, eight press conferences, and you have no questions.

So you say, is that my fault?

No.

On the other hand, you'll find in the press sometimes, writing the press conferences, the president made no comment on that.

We wait for it.

I prepare for it.

If I spend just as much time

They're ready for every goddamn moment.

They can never ask for it.

Well, maybe there are two things that occur to me there.

The San Clemente device and restricting the scope, or just picking your audiences and going out like you're going to do with the old folks and saying something to the old folks, which we badly need to say politically, and which we'll never get a question on, on the press release, though.

Maybe the press conference is not the device.

I mean, that's our best device, unfortunately.

It's the only one where we can use primetime.

Yeah.

You can't put any kind of primetime to talk about all of this.

No, but you went to Williamsburg, and you talked about work.

And that was on the front page of every paper in the country.

It was on television.

And I think it established your position on that issue.

So sometimes I think you just have to do the stand-up thing.

The Chamber of Commerce is going to get much.

That's true.

Well, I can't say I understand it.

No, the point that I'm getting at is that as far as the press is concerned, and they reflect on that to an extent, subject A is not this.

I mean, that's just ridiculous.

That's for sure.

And yet, from a defensive standpoint, very important.

It's important.

I agree.

Well, we can get something on revenue insurance and property tax.

No more than that.

Don't give me 30 pages.

All right.

A, B, C, D folders.

All right.

Something on that.

Something on drugs, the same thing.

More than a page or two.

That's all.

Okay.

That's really what we need, and that's a good thing to get up there.

I'll just probably have to touch on this, before we reveal this disclosure.

We can find anything to say to this.

I don't think I have any problem with discussing that if I stay off the

He's talking about the principal horizon of it.

This is a family fight among those people.

And past history and history will judge all that.

But there's an instant that he realizes that he's going to have to say, I don't know if that would be the lead, but at least

That's okay.

I don't think that's bad.

I think that's silly.

I don't think you can read nor say something about it.

No, I think that's fine.

Here again, it's a defensive kind of posture on domestic issues that I'm really looking for.

You're not going to get a lead on welfare reform as far as that's concerned.

Or my speech to the doctors about drugs.

You may get something out of that.

I might.

Maybe.

Incidentally, Laird has picked Wilbur to be his assistant secretary for health and environment.

The Stanford Wilbur's the head of the AMA vice president who's in that Palo Alto clinic.

So there's a pretty good line into the AMA.

He called me last night to say you might want to announce that at the AMA during the speech.

And so I'll get that out of the way.

That's good.

You might, if you would, if you've got time before, and I didn't, I don't need it too far.

But if you regarded this thing, if you could sit down and see what you think, probably what you said about the case.

Actually, the way I see it, John, is this.

I'm terribly confused.

First, let's understand what you're talking about.

There are two separate issues.

One there is the issue.

of how the United States got through war.

That's perfect.

That is a question that is probate for debate.

It's a question for discussion, for investigation, the Congress and the rest.

Second, the question is the disclosure of classified information.

That is a second question that bears on every presidential decision going far beyond war.

That's one that this case is involved in.

On that, we have to take a stand.

As far as the first question is concerned, speaking in partisan terms, it certainly is no detriment for this administration to have a family fight going on as to who was responsible for getting us into war, except it demonstrates that we inherited the situation that we created.

So we could therefore just wash our hands of it.

On the other hand, we do have a responsibility to defend the integrity of

of classified documents because it involves, and then you go to the, it involves the ability to document so on and so on.

The whole advisory process.

But you know, you really get down to it.

Like if you, if you didn't, if you don't move John to stop this, if you didn't, if you could allow this publication, he realized that, I'm sure you do, every newspaper, every television station, then must be out, frankly, purchasing.

Sure.

Purchasing.

I'm, I'm, I mean, I, I, I'm sure that some,

People, I mean, their main targets and the rest will say, well gee, why did we escalate the issue like everybody did by getting an injunction against the Times?

What choice did we get?

Was there any choice?

I think that's a good one.

Knowing what happened, wouldn't we have been there if we hadn't done that?

Oh, I know.

The point, though, that we got to that point is that the derelict did not.

The point about it is that

You open Pandora's box by not fighting them.

It's like exacting privilege.

Exacting privilege, you know.

Rockford's always wanted to say, it's a soft line here.

Because he said, let's get along with the Congress.

You take a hard line.

Why?

Not because of the particular case, but because there may be some case in the future where you don't have a lot of freedom.

That's right.

Now, in this instance, what this really involves is that

What happened 10 years ago, maybe it's all right to put out.

It really isn't as long as the war, so we can still put out the Pearl Harbors, as I understand.

But right now, if, for example, they said, what negotiations, secret negotiations are now going on in Paris?

Now, what if somebody leaves the quarter to hold it?

or take it out of the whole Vietnam context and say, what secret negotiations do you not have underway with the Taiwanese on Texas?

If we were to publish everything that everybody's advised you on, what negotiations do we have with the Russians on Berlin?

What negotiations do we have with Hong Kong?

What negotiations do we have with the Chinese?

We can't say.

Calvary will not say.

And that's really what you get down to.

Of course, the argument at the time would be, well, this is all ancient history.

Now, that gets down to when you just declassify it.

And there, an argument could be made that we should declassify it sooner.

They didn't raise that question.

They didn't come and ask Calvary, declassify Calvary.

Did they?

No.

Or it would have been a proper way to do it.

If they had come in and said, we have these documents, or we think we can get them, and we don't think there's any reason for them to be classified, would you be classified?

Then I think they'd have an argument on that issue.

There's another aspect of this that John McCone raised, that John, he was on the radio this morning, I don't know if he's in shape, whatever, but he's getting it.

Well, I hope he took the run.

He took a good one, and he said, there's an aspect of this that nobody thinks about, and that is that a president's advisors have to feel

that they have a complete reign of freedom in bringing possibilities to him without their being subjected at the time to criticism because they have advocated or fought in some far-out position.

Now he said if there's going to be full disclosure of the decisional process on a contemporary basis, he said everybody's going to be looking over his shoulder.

And you see, the president won't guess what are the reasons they've got that issue.

What does I understand?

I don't know.

They tell me 20 years.

All right, that's fine.

But you know, even if there's going to be a closure five years afterwards, Bob, there's plenty of Tobago.

There's a lot of these advisors in the San Jose, Rogers and Laird, typically, aren't talking to the issue.

They're talking to the record company.

Laird writes to Laird all the time, right?

How then can I sit there and expect to get any antivirus?

I'm the only one that has to say what I feel.

So my call is going to be there.

They go back and make their rule notes, and it'll all come out sounding.

That's all right.

But my God, if the military feels there should be a contingency plan for this and that, they ought to say so.

But jeez.

These meetings, believe me, they talk about sitting down and advising with the members of the NSC with regard to this or that or anything like that.

Why it's not, damn sure again, it's nothing like that.

Because they go on and on and on.

I mean, it's all about not to do it, but they're making the record.

They said, well, this or that, but if you don't do it, maybe this or that or that helps.

who wobbles all over the place.

No one here steps up and says, you ought to do this.

They're afraid.

You know, they're crazy that sometimes the history is trying to say they were on the wrong side of the issue.

Yeah, but now it's even worse.

It's a different quality affair with our history and their history.

And I don't know.

Well, I suppose it's a tough one to handle.

But I guess we don't have anybody in the shop that can handle it.

That's the problem.

I don't know.

I said, well,

He's got Scallion, or Sapphire, or A-Price, and Colson, and all the rest running around like chickens with their heads cut off from a cow.

That's the, there's only one way to run things.

Put one man in charge.

Oh wait a minute, I did speak to Bob about one thing that I didn't hand down for you.

You've got to get a stronger man on the farm to shoot.

I mean, the, I mean, publicists, publicists, whatever, couldn't be better on the, on what to do.

However, he is, in effect, I do a couple of times, we've got good things on the migration, but it is hard to dismiss it.

So I don't think John Whitaker,

I'm not sure if this is political as hell.

Maybe he doesn't realize how we're not getting a crumb.

Believe me.

As a matter of fact, I had Whitaker and John.

John Whitaker's a goddamn good politician.

I had these guys in, and we talked about it.

The guy that they came up with, is this retiring, uh, uh, Purdue or somewhere?

Humphrey?

No.

Not Brett Humphrey?

No.

It's an old, it's an old timer from the Eisenhower administration.

That is an old timer?

No, no.

Al Glass?

Yep.

Yeah.

You know him?

He's a real bust.

Well, what would you think about putting him on the road?

Just stump around the, the farm country, uh, put him on the road without a title?

That's not a problem.

Titles we got.

I think that with the farm issue, once you get the war issue out of their minds, the farm will not be so bad, particularly if we can get one grandchild and a child, which may be possible.

And particularly, too, if we have the fact, basically, that the Democrats, any of the Democrats,

We will raise the morality issue.

Now, we've got to face it.

The farmers are one of them.

There are many names that are bad, but there's one of them.

They are the goddamn farmers.

They're morons.

They won't.

They couldn't take Humphrey.

Humphrey would have too many of those claps around him.

Muskie, of course, has got too many of those people.

There's still pictures of them with those on them.

I'm trying to do a very local analysis of that.

And Bob is talking about different things.

I guess he's talking about the polls in terms of presidential approval.

But polls in terms of foreign policy approval,

Well, and there again, it's very spotty and it's on a very short time range.

You get funny swings.

So we're trying to analyze it.

All due to the poll, of course, when you're dealing with the issues.

Yeah.

Well, I sneak in a terrible thing every now and then to be careful.

Basically, it has to be cops and turds.

Do you think government is doing enough?

Do you think the state government is in favor of it and that kind of stuff?

Well, I just wonder, maybe butts on the road is one thing, but I wonder if we're really what is needed is somebody within our shop who thinks, who thinks in public relations terms about what the hell, even here we've got these side things about

Well, I'm going to say it's about welfare reform.

That speaks to the sinners.

How about somebody in our shop that hasn't stayed in private?

I don't know.

You know, we're doing lots of that.

They run in various things.

They have the radio talk out.

We've got to have another radio talk.

Maybe that's another way to do that.

I don't know.

What do you think?

Well, let me talk to Quaker Jackson, the best guy to talk to on this, because he is a political.

And he does have his own shortcomings in this.

What he does in a sense, he's also preoccupied with other things.

I think his shortcoming, and he is a

He's extremely honest and capable and wants to do the right thing.

And it really comes down to the point that the right thing doesn't make a darn damn big difference.

But he can come down and do his work for us.

Well, last week we had Bryce and Hardin and Campbell and John.

Did you just sit down and go through all these names, you know, Spitzer?

I like Spitz.

Well, you know, he can't hurt anything, and he can go around and talk to her.

Well, and then order her clothes and all that sort of stuff and get local TV and talk about it.

But if you work up the tradition, if you work up, just sit down on the opens and separate out the issues.

to be very clear with you about it.

It's very common in the press about that issue.

But I can say that I think, and I get the context very easily, but if you think so, the opacity, you must realize, of course, you must realize that will leave the whole place.

That will be in the news, and you'll get a copy of that.

I don't want that to be subsidiary.

But if you feel it answers the objections from the press corps.

I think that you're going to have to spend

10 minutes on the good things.

No, I had a character difference.

Mine was spent only 10 minutes on this, 20 minutes on the bad things.

So I'm actually better to close on this.

I know this is a matter that for most people I don't want to do it.

But no, I go in and get the usual crap.

I used to do it.

I just came on the way over there.

Well, you did it in Birmingham.

No.

And that's what started turning up the flame.

That was delivered there because of the

Because I want to give you, I don't mean to give you the signal on Blue Dorn, but Colson and I think he can be tapped for very significant amounts of money.

And that's the reason for this thing this afternoon.

But I think the truth of the matter is we can get 100 grand out of him on just this one little episode.

And if we can't, one thing, we'll turn him off.

But it's worth a try.

He's a crook of the first order.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, he's hot.

But he's here to be had.

Okay.